Around 300 BC, some new people
invaded West Asia from Siberia in the north. These people were called the
Parthians. Like the Scythians, and like the
Persians when they first came to West Asia, the
Parthians were nomadic people.
They travelled around Siberia with their horses
and their cattle, and grazed the
cattle and the horses on the great fields of grass there. Usually they lived
well enough this way.

But sometimes the weather was worse than usual, and the Parthian cattle
could not find enough to eat. This time, when that happened, the Parthians
headed south into Alexander's
empire. Maybe they had heard that Alexander had died and they thought it
would be easy to take over. Maybe they just thought it would be nicer in
the south, where it was warmer.
The Parthians immediately succeeded in taking over the middle part of Alexander's
empire (roughly modern Iran). This split the Greek empire in half, leaving
the Greek colonies in Bactria (modern Afghanistan) isolated. They stayed
there for about 200 years, gradually learning the culture of West Asia.
They converted to Zoroastrianism.

But around 100 BC, Seleucia
was getting weaker and weaker. The Parthians started to take over parts
of Eastern Seleucia. At the same time, the Romans
started to take over parts of Western Seleucia. Eventually the Romans and
the Parthians met in the middle. There was a great battle which the Parthians
won (by treachery, the Romans said), and Parthian soldiers killed the Roman general, Crassus. Possibly the Parthians' advantage was that they had the new Indian crucible steel swords.

From then on, for hundreds of years, the Romans and the
Parthians were always more or less fighting about where exactly the border
between them would be. Sometimes the Romans won, sometimes the Parthians
won.

Karen Eva Carr, PhD.Assoc. Professor Emerita, History
Portland State University

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Professor Carr holds a B.A. with high honors from Cornell University in classics and archaeology, and her M.A. and PhD. from the University of Michigan in Classical Art and Archaeology. She has excavated in Scotland, Cyprus, Greece, Israel, and Tunisia, and she has been teaching history to university students for a very long time.

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